The Exploding watermelon stunt or challenge involves wrapping rubber bands around a watermelon until the pressure of the rubber bands causes the watermelon to explode. Though previous video iterations of the event have proved popular, on April 8, 2016, the website BuzzFeed streamed the stunt live on Facebook.
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BuzzFeed Event
The event began around 3pm (Eastern United States time). During the 45-minute stream, the event peaked at over 800,000 live watchers, and the resulting video of the event garnered millions of views. The event was parodied a few days later on The Tonight Show; that show had attempted the stunt in September 2015 with Olivia Wilde but cut the segment short as it was taking too long.
The event generated discussion of the future of journalism where such silly events can garner so much attention.
Challenge origin
The concept of putting rubber bands around a watermelon until it explodes first became popular on the internet as early as at least July 2012, when the stunt was filmed by The Slow Mo Guys with a very high frame-rate camera, but earlier videos date back at least to 2008.